Are You Still Confused between MBR and MBBR?

Are You Still Confused between MBR and MBBR?

MBBR and MBR are commonly used in wastewater treatment technology abbreviation, but due to the abbreviation is too similar, often cause some unnecessary misunderstanding.

Here, JX-purification formally emphasises that MBBR and MBR are two different technologies, which should not be confused!

1. Definition

Definition

MBR is short for Meane Biological Reactor, Chinese name is Membrane Biological Reactor.

MBBR is short for Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor, Chinese name is Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor.

2. Principle

From the principle

MBR: activated sludge + membrane separation

MBBR: Biofilm method

3. Principle of MBR

Membrane Bioreactor (MBR) is a new type of water treatment technology which consists of membrane separation unit and biological treatment unit, using membrane separation equipment to retain the activated sludge and macromolecular organic matter in the biochemical reaction tank, eliminating the secondary sedimentation tank.

Due to the filtration effect of the membrane, microorganisms are completely retained in the MBR membrane bioreactor, so the concentration of activated sludge is greatly increased, and at the same time, it realises the complete separation of the hydraulic retention time and the age of activated sludge, which eliminates the problem of sludge expansion in the traditional activated sludge method, and the difficult-to-degraded substances can be continuously reacted and degraded in the reactor.

4. MBBR principle

Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor (MBBR), the principle is to increase the biomass and biological species in the reactor by adding a certain number of suspended carriers into the reactor, so as to improve the treatment efficiency of the reactor.

Since the density of the filler is close to water, it is completely mixed with water during aeration. In addition, each carrier has different biological species inside and outside, and some anaerobic or parthenogenetic bacteria grow inside, and the environment for microbial growth is three-phase: gas, liquid and solid.

Carrier in the water collision and shear effect, so that the air bubbles are more fine, increasing the use of oxygen outside the aerobic bacteria, so that each carrier is a micro-reactor, so that the nitrification reaction and denitrification reaction exists at the same time, so as to improve the treatment effect.

The core of MBBR is to increase the filler, the unique design of the filler in the blower aeration under the perturbation in the reaction pool floating with the water flow, driven by the attached growth of biological flora and the pollutants in the water column and the full contact with oxygen, pollutants through the adsorption and diffusion into the biofilm, is degraded by microorganisms.

Attached growth of microorganisms can reach a very high biomass, so the biological concentration in the reaction tank is several times that of the suspended growth activated sludge process, and the degradation efficiency is also doubled.

5. Treatment effect of COD

Both processes have high removal rate of COD, BOD, ammonia nitrogen, MBR process relies on its high sludge load, MBBR process relies on the biofilm on the filler.

6. Treatment effect TN, TP chapter

MBBR process is very good for TN removal, TP removal needs to rely on dosing chemical phosphorus removal.

MBR process on the removal of TN needs to rely on the front-end biological removal. MBR membrane itself has no effect on the removal of TN. The MBR membrane itself has no effect on TN removal. The removal of TP also depends on the front-end chemical dosing to remove phosphorus.

7. Treatment effect of SS

MBBR is not effective in removing SS, and needs to rely on back-end filtration/sedimentation to remove SS;

MBR membrane can remove SS better.

8. Cost

MBBR process filler can be added once, and only need to strengthen the biofilm management on the filler in the subsequent operation. The investment in the construction period is large, but the operation and maintenance is simple.

MBR process: the service life of the membrane group is generally 4-5 years, and the replacement cycle is shorter. Daily operation and management need to carry out chemical cleaning, offline cleaning and other maintenance work, operation and management is more difficult. And the cost is high, the annual maintenance and replacement cost of the membrane group in the average cost of more than a million. (This depends on the specific project, there are large projects and small projects. Our company has been doing MBR water treatment for 20 years, with rich experience, we can provide technical and product support, you are very welcome to inquire.)

JX-purification hope you can distinguish MBR and MBBR clearly after reading this article.